Ryan Close: Founder & CEO of Bartesian

Episode 578

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we explored the fascinating world of home mixology with Ryan Close, the innovative Founder and CEO of Bartesian, the pioneering company that's revolutionizing the cocktail experience. Ryan shared his journey from bartender to leading tech entrepreneur, detailing how his background in the bar industry inspired the creation of Bartesian—a device that crafts premium cocktails at the push of a button using real, high-quality ingredients.
Ryan delved into the unique "premium cocktail" experience Bartesian offers, making expert-level drinks accessible to everyone. He discussed the challenges of breaking into the beverage industry, the development of Bartesian’s technology, and how customer feedback has been crucial in refining the product and driving the company’s expansion. Ryan also highlighted the strategic steps that led to Bartesian’s presence in over 1,800 Walmart stores and its significant online success.
We also discussed how Bartesian’s innovative approach has not only captivated cocktail enthusiasts but also earned prestigious awards, including the CES Innovation Award. Ryan shared insights on navigating business growth, maintaining innovation, and his plans for future expansions. Join us for an inspiring conversation that mixes technology, entrepreneurship, and the art of a great drink. This episode is now available on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. I’m so excited to have our next guest here. We are gonna dive into the world of innovative cocktails with Ryan close, Who is the mastermind and founder and CEO of an incredible brand called Bartesian, Game Changing cocktail machine that’s stirring up the beverage industry. And imagine this premium bar quality cocktails at the press of a button right in your kitchen, or as I was sharing with him in my brother in law’s law office that I was giving him some jokes about but he says it’s quite effective for clients to have that so whatever works. But from his early days as a bartender to launching a product that snagged a spot on Oprah’s Favorite Things, gotta love that for sure, Ryan’s journey is nothing short of inspiring, and today we’ll get into the inside scoop of how he started this company, how he’s been scaling it, and overall, just talk about all of the good stuff that’s going on and also the challenges and the breakthroughs that he’s faced and obviously overcome. So welcome, Ryan, thanks, Carol, happy to be here. Super, super excited to have you so. So can you start by telling us the inspiration behind starting Bartesian And how I guess having the bartending background probably didn’t hurt at all. I have always said that waitressing or bartending is always something that everyone should do, if not to, you know, learn cocktails to also deal with consumers and the public overall. But I loved that about your story.

Ryan Close 2:36
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I waited tables and worked in hotel banquets for number of years, all through high school. I think I got all my friends jobs at the Holiday Inn. I was, you know, working there from grade 10 onwards. So it’s a great, you know, it’s a tough slugging, you know, job, and you got to learn how to deal with people and, you know, kind of take it on the chin. And that helps you, obviously, a lot in the entrepreneurial world, but, yeah, no, we, you know, I bartended through through high school, later, later years in high school, obviously, and then into my college years, and that’s how I paid my way through college. Was bartending. I was terrible at it. I could barely make an old fashioned, you know, that you get all the sugar in the last sip. And this was before, you know, you could have your phone and Google the recipes. So I used to, like, put cheat notes on my hand. I was, I would just dread anyone asking me to order something, because I was like, Oh, they’re gonna know I’m some phony bartender doesn’t really know how to make anything. But, yeah, that was really, you know, when I went into I met a couple engineers in an incubator in Canada, and we were, you know, we made a lot of sense. I thought it was, it was a no brainer for for the hotel channel, and then also the consumer side, where, you know, making cocktails is difficult, even for someone who did it for a living or a living. I put that in air quotes, but, you know, you got to have the right liqueurs, bitters, juices, you know, you oftentimes, they’re obscure. You don’t want to spend, you know, 40, $30 on a bottle of bitters that you’re only using a few dashes of. And you know, you’re not going to have maybe mango juice or pineapple in your fridge, right? So it just, I thought it ticked a lot of boxes for me through my experience, to make it easier. And the, you know, the business hadn’t really changed, or that, that technology, that hasn’t been hadn’t been innovated for so many years, right? It was, you know, when I was at the Holiday Inn, working at the bar, I would have a pushy bar, you know, I would push it out for banquets and weddings and, you know, I’m making plus one, so like a vodka and OJ or rum and cokes that all tasted terrible, right? With, you know, reconstituted nasty juices and, and, you know, that’s that 20 years later, that’s what they’re still doing, right? Like, if you go to most of those hotels, even the nicer ones, they’re rolling out a bar. And so it made a ton of sense. So, yeah, we had started kind of tinkering and figuring out how. To do this, we went on Kickstarter. We ended up, you know, being a top 1% on Kickstarter history for for sales, and so gave us validations like, Okay, this isn’t just like, oh, it’s cool. Let’s, let’s, you know, maybe a few people will buy it. A novelty thing that ends up at, like, a airport retailer, right? We that was nothing that was obviously not the idea. It’s like, how do we create something that, you know, becomes something an everyday solution, right? Similar to, you know, maybe a crock pot or something like that, where it’s like, you once you have it, it’s like, how did I live without this thing? Right? This is how I always make these things. So, you know, we, we took a long time, but we, you know, got there.

Kara Goldin 5:39
So from the time that you conceptualize this to actually having a physical product, how long did that take?

Ryan Close 5:48
Oh, boy. We used to laugh and say, like, startups were, you know, known as being like fast and, you know, quick, and we were, like, the world’s slowest startup. It took us probably, you know, six years before, you know, from concept to execution, right? And and that was one of the challenges, you know, for myself, as you know, I had a business, you know, operation, sales and operations background, and so, you know, I had quit my day job, thanks. My wife kind of blessed me to say, okay, yeah, time to time to go. You can do that. I know you’re miserable and you’re not happy, you want to build your own thing. So when I did that, and I started with, you know, we started building up our engineers, and we started building up supply chain out of Canada, and it’s like, we, we just don’t have the the knowledge, really, we didn’t have the skills, the knowledge to to start setting up and building like because we essentially like a hardware company as well as a CPG consumer packaged goods. And, you know, both in their own, you know, regard are incredibly difficult. So we had to make a decision, like, which, who are we, you know, who are we going to be and, and that was obviously critical to finding, you know, parting ways with my, you know, early partners, prior to launch, we, got it, kind of got it to like the Kickstarter phase, where we were able to hand assemble the units in Canada in a garage. We shipped them all out, and folks loved them, right? They really liked them, although, you know, the product was a bit subpar. It was a, you know, there was a few issues with it. And so it’s like, okay, how do we get it to the point where, yes, these Kickstarter people you know may let us off the hook, but the general population is not gonna they expect much better. And, and we knew we only had one shot to get it right out of the gate, right, because you get the reviews Amazon and and so that’s why we decided to license it to, you know, hardware manufacturing companies that you know been doing this over 100 years, and do it extremely well

Kara Goldin 7:41
and help you create it. That’s, that’s awesome. So how did you figure out, like, what channel did you guys use in order to figure out, okay, we might be on to something

Ryan Close 7:52
in terms of, like, the consumer channel, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the consumers channel was a lot of trade shows, you know, a ton, a ton of trade shows which, you know, I loved. Obviously, at the time I didn’t love them probably as much. Now, looking back, I look at them very fondly. But, you know, I say, you know, I spoke to 10s of 1000s of consumers. I honestly did. It’s not even an exaggeration, because, you know, imagine I’ve done ces now, I think, you know, eight years. And, you know, in the early days, it’s one after another, after another, non stop, you know, 810, hour days, you know, just explaining how the product works, making samples. And, you know, this was, we were doing this before we even had a working prototype. I was, I was at these trade shows, you know, setting up and saying, like, here’s what the unit looks like, and then I would have, like, pre made cocktails and be like, and this is what it’ll taste like, trust me, you know, this is it’s, I’m not gonna make it for you right now, but this is how it’ll work. What do you think? Right? And you know, it was like, Yeah, everyone thought it was really cool. And it’s like, what? And I always, you know, what would you pay for this? Like, if you could have this in your list, like, what would you pay for? And so even at that point, even then, I wasn’t sure it was going to win, right? I was like, I know this is going to be a multi million dollar business. I knew it right. But how, when I say when, like, can it be a global brand, and can it be right? Is it going to be everywhere, and is it going to be a mainstay, right? And so I didn’t know that until we actually had a properly functioning unit. And I would do trade shows, and I would make the cocktail for people and show them. And I mean, not not 97 not 94 not 98 100% of the people that I would make it for, you know, their eyes lit up like saucers. They’re like, this is the coolest thing, they’re getting their phones out. They’re calling people over, I mean, and these are people who are like, you know, head bartenders at Nobu, or head buyers at Bed Bath Beyond or, you know, CEOs of, you know, big appliance companies like, these are the people I would be showing and everyone had the same reaction. So I was like, this, this is a no brainer. We’re. To kill it. We just got to get more awareness.

Kara Goldin 10:02
So when you think about those early days of getting the product out there, and, you know, actually having people purchase it, what was maybe some surprising feedback that you thought consumers would really want and they didn’t really care about, Yeah,

Ryan Close 10:19
great question. So, you know, yeah, we did a ton of work on, you know, what do people what are they willing to you know, what do they want? What kind of tech do they want in the appliance? What do they not need? And we realized a couple things jumped out, right out of the gate, and it was the ability to customize was a massive critical factor for folks, like cocktails, you know, are something that are personal to each individual, right? There’s, you know, I like my Margarita sweeter. I like it stronger. I like it more tart. You know, everyone we talked to and we talked again, a lot of people, it was something different. And we’re like, wow, how do we we’re net. We were like, oh, we’ll just bell curve it, right? And then, you know, everything will just be Bell curved, and we’ll and it was like, that’s not good enough, though, like we’re still the bell curve is just so wonky with with cocktail taste and preferences. And so we, after doing all these research and study, we said, Okay, we need to be able to customize the consumer does. Needs to customize what alcohol is put in the unit itself, right? Because we need to allow the consumer to say, Hey, this is a specific vodka I like, or this is the certain rum, like, I’m a Tito’s girl. I’m a, you know, certain, you know, bullet bourbon guy. And so that was important. After all, you know, speaking to all these people, they said, you know, these are the brands that I like, and that’s one reason why I don’t want to buy an RTD like a ready to drink cocktail, or when I go to the bar like, this is important to me. And then the other one was selecting your strength, so being able to customize whether you want a light, a double, a mocktail. And so this was, and this goes back, like, you know, a decade ago, where we put this technology in. And obviously, you know, over the last few years, the trends of like, you know, like people drinking less having mocktails has grown exponentially. And that’s probably the fastest growing segment there is right now. So you know, the barteja Now, all of our appliances are, you know, made for mocktail settings. So you know, through my wife having babies and or, you know, not drinking. You know, you can, you can always enjoy it.

Kara Goldin 12:17
So what are some of the most popular mixes that you have so you get just to describe it to people, you get the cartridge. Or actually, is it called a cartridge? Or is it called

Ryan Close 12:27
a capsule? Exactly? So, okay, yeah. So just very quickly, just so yeah, again, I forget that I’m on a podcast, and we’re not, you know, people haven’t seen the how the drink works, but essentially, you know, the capsules contain all the bitters, liqueurs and juices, right? And so they’re sourced from around the world. They’re all natural. We don’t put anything artificial in our drinks. No artificial colors, flavors. So that was very critical. And you know, going back to earlier about how difficult it was, you know, trying to launch a hardware and CPG, it’s like now taking in consideration, like we’re not just putting, you know, just juice in a cup. Like we’re going to Italy for, you know, liqueurs. We’re going to Texas for blackberries for, you know, like we’re sourcing around the globe the best ingredients in real format that make the perfect cocktail, bringing it into the US and then having, you know, having it obviously produced. So, you know, we realized quickly that, you know, flavor, the taste, has to just be, be a winner every time. And, you know, using natural ingredients and then balancing that, not to get boring in the technical side, but balancing that with shelf stability, right, like, it’s great. Okay, you’ve, you’ve made an amazing tasting cocktail, but if it only lasts, you know, two weeks on a on a shelf that’s not going to be very good for your business. So, you know, working together with the team to make sure that we could nail that. But the most popular cocktails now and have always been really margaritas have been a killer for us. They they’re they’re very popular. And our consumers have kind of come to us over the years and are like, we like this type of Margarita. We want to mango Margarita. We want this. So we again, we source it, we blend it, we make sure it’s perfect, and send it to the consumer. And then, surprisingly, for me, the second largest group of cocktails is a lemon drop. And so that was probably our number one cocktail for a while, a lemon drop cocktail kind of a throwback drink. And so we created a lemon drop variety pack with different varieties of lemon drop, like a blueberry lemon drop. And so people, you know, folks, love it.

Kara Goldin 14:30
And how many different flavors do you actually have? Yeah, we’re

Ryan Close 14:34
up to 65 now. And then you Yeah, it’s, it’s why our team, it’s, it’s called the stir team. So it stands for science, tech, innovation, research, and they’re incredible. They they have the best job in the world, right? They go and they drink some of the best bars and find the right gold standard cocktails, and come back to the office in Chicago and and produce it right, and go source all the right ingredients around the world, and and so they’re, they’re doing. Really great at finding, you know, not only the everyday cocktails, and I think we’ve hit most of them that we have, you know, if you buy a Bartesian, you can always get the the number one sellers that are always around, but also seasonal and, like, super cool, you know, limited time offerings. Like, we just launched a honeydew cocktail that was, like, you know, aligned with, like, the US Open. So, really yummy, you know, vodka melon, raspberry cock drink. And then, you know, we did, like the 19th hole was for the Masters, right? So it’s like a spiked Arnold Palmer, and it was very popular, and we sell out, right? But we, we want to make sure, you know, someone invests, you know, 250 $350 in the appliance and the Bartesian and enjoys the community. We want to continue to, you know, deliver them really cool, fun, you know, relevant cocktails, right? So, hey, I’m at, I’m having people over to watch the Oscars, or we’re watching, you know, the US Open. I can, you know, it’s like I’m there in the stands. I can enjoy it just like I’m, you know, part of it.

Kara Goldin 15:58
I love that you have a model that is not just selling one item, but are replenishing, you know, as well. So you’re obviously, even if somebody’s going to buy it from a retailer, very likely they’re going to actually replenish through you, right? Because you’re going to have all 65 flavors online and special flavors as well that you’re developing for, you know, events like the masters, for example. What do you think that means for your business? Right? Like, you have this connection with consumers that is pretty unique. Not a lot of businesses have that. I mean, obviously Nespresso does, but, I mean, you’ve, you guys have just really done something pretty great, yet it’s a pretty simple product for consumers to purchase and fall in love with if they’re looking for something that is cocktails and but I’m, I’m just curious, like, what your thoughts are on that,

Ryan Close 16:59
you know, yeah, it’s our consumers are unbelievable. You know, I go to check into hotels, and, you know, if I give my email or something, they see bartejian and their their face lights up. They’re so excited. It’s such a positive group of folks. And we have multiple like Facebook groups. We have, you know, with, you know, 30,000 group members that are, you know, huge advocates. I’m a part of these groups and communities, and I’ll interact with folks and learn. We learn from them. They’re, they’re incredibly, you know, generous with their time and their feedback, you know, unvarnished at most times, right? So you get the good with the bad. Be careful what you wish for, right? There’s been plenty of nights in the early days where I’m like, my wife’s like, get off that right now. You’re just because I’m getting frustrated. Or I’m like, I’m going to reply to this. And she’s like, No, you’re not right. But you know, it’s, yeah, the community is unbelievable. They they love the product. It’s, it’s not just about a drink. Like, Hey, how can I I’m going to buy this product so I can get a good drink at home. It’s, it’s more than that. It’s, it’s people have incredible setups in their house, right? Just like back in the day, where people would build these, you know, massive grand basement bars, right? You know, the Bartesian folks, they don’t need to invest all that space or all that money into making this a part of, like their cocktail culture and their in their in their home and their evening if they want to have neighbors or friends over for a cocktail, they can quite easily, you know, set up a really cool, you know, rolling bar cart, or set it up in their dining room or in their kitchen, and they customize it to have a real neat, you know, some signage, and they’re very passionate, and so that’s helped us, that’s been really allowed us to kind of, you know, because, in fairness, like when we launched it, it was like it was so much work just to get the product and the cocktails. We didn’t really think of like that whole customer journey a lot. Honestly, it was like, kind of piecemeal after that. It’s like, okay, good. We got the product. We get, you know, we now allow people to get the product in the capsules, and we can deliver it to them. And, you know, we’re not out of business. And then it’s like, well, now the real work starts. So it’s like, because customers would be like, Well, where do I put these capsules? How do I store them? Like, what do I, you know, what I want to have, you know, rimming sugars or I want and so it’s like, well, we need now capsule drawers and trays. And, you know, I want to put this in my fridge, or I want to. So, you know, we just listened a ton to our consumers, and we reacted quickly. That’s the benefit of being a nimble startup. And I’ve got incredible team members, senior guys that and ladies on the team that just move very quick, and it’s like, okay, hey, here’s what we need. Let’s make it happen and just break down walls and get it done.

Kara Goldin 19:39
Being an entrepreneur maybe looks easy to someone who has not been an entrepreneur. There’s always these stories in the background where something you know major happens. Say, I was talking to somebody yesterday, where her plant caught on fire, and all of a sudden, all her orders, you know, from like. It, you know, there was nothing that could be done. And again, she was a lot smaller of a business than maybe some of the other customers that they had, so she had to get in line, and that, like, you know, was a terrible situation. So, and she ended up finding another manufacturer, and she was able to, you know, beg for a little more time in order to still have those big orders from Target and and others. But is there something that has happened along the way where, you know, it just kind of hits you in the gut and you had to act immediately, and you got through it,

Ryan Close 20:42
Yeah, boy. How do I nail this down to one or two? I mean, it’s like, you know, 50 or 100 probably I could list, but yeah. I mean, in the early days, it was like, when we were up and running, and we had, you know, a contract manufacturer that would fill the capsules for us right in in Wisconsin, and so it wasn’t far from here, and it was like, there was a big challenge for us. It was like, Hey, we can run out of machines. And we did, like, for the first couple years, especially after, you know, we were named Oprah’s Favorite Things. And then we started getting on Amazon and being an Amazon bestseller, like, we couldn’t keep inventory in stock for two years, we were sold out. And then, you know, once we finally get some inventory back, it would get, you know, viral on tick tock. And, you know, next thing, you know, it’s like, why I go on? I’d be like, This is great. The sales are amazing. But like, what is going on? Like, why? And like, we’d be, like, searching. And I was clueless. I’ve had to kind of have my kids kind of help me with tick tock, and I was dumb as anything. And it’s like, oh yeah, here I’m searching and finding, like, some viral tick tock. But you know, the challenge, back to your question was, you know, we would, you know, go to our CO man and be like, hey, we need to add more rotary fillers. Like, you’re not making enough. We need more. And they’re like, well, sorry, it’s, you know, four months out. And so the chaos and the scramble and the phone calls of, what do we do? Because, you know, yeah, like I said, we could run out of machines, but you could never I was like, a fatal error for us. If we ever ran out of capsules, it was, I told my team, it’s fatal because, you know, Nothing’s worse than someone investing in a product and they can’t get they can’t use it, so it’s just a non negotiable. And so we were the team again. Back the team was able to navigate it. But you know that I used to, I had meetings where I would go to, like, you know, I won’t say the name, but like, the one of the biggest hotel chains in the world, I had multiple meetings, and then I finally got the big one, and I brought the product, and I was, and this is really early days where I was still had, I had a working prototype, and again, air quotes. And, you know, I’m in the hotel the night before. I’ve got an ironing board. I’m iron, I’m hand filling the capsules, right? Because we didn’t have the line wasn’t up yet. I’m ironing on the lids. I’m sure the hotel didn’t appreciate me using their iron for that. But then, you know, I get to the meeting, I’m early. I’ve got my suit on, I’m all excited, and we’ve, I’ve got a whole boardroom with, there’s probably 18 people around this boardroom, all the senior execs for this, okay? And they weren’t very pleasant, right? They were like, down to business. Let’s go. And I’m up there, and I’m like, trying, I’m trying to get this going to make the product, and the machine wouldn’t turn on. There was no power. And so I, I’m like, What do I do? I’m trying to fumble through this like they wanted to go and see what this fancy technology is, but it didn’t work. And, you know, suffice to say, we didn’t get that deal done. But, you know, for me, it was like, yeah, that sucked. But I, you know, I, you know, sat in it for about 30 seconds, and it’s like, on to the next thing. Like, that sucked. It was brutal. What could I have done differently? Not a lot. I mean, you know this things happen, right? So, but, you know, there was that. There was many, many situations like that. Oh, one other quick one I’ll do is just, you know, when we partner with our so we had tooled up ourselves, so we had actually gone in and and paid, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars and found this plan in China and and we didn’t have, we hardly had any money to make the machines, because we were going to, at one point, build it and produce it ourselves, until we realized that, you know, oh yeah, there’s a thing called working capital. And, you know, we’re not, we don’t have any of it, and no bank’s going to give us loans. So, yeah, we’re getting POS for, you know, 1000s of machines. We can’t ever make them, right? So I had, I found a licensing partner, and that’s that was Hamilton Beach brands. And so they’re like, All right, great. Well, we need the tools. Like, if we want to get this, if you want this deal done, part of it is, you got to bring your tools to our factory in China. And so what did that mean? Well, I’ve never been to China, but I got on a plane and I went to this factory that our current factory, which looked like a prison, and had to, like, negotiate, navigate with that factory, to take our tooling back, which you can imagine, was not an easy, you know, not a pleasant task. They did not, they did not want to do that, and it was very difficult. And you know, we’re literally pick up trucks, you know, rows of them. Pretty wild, wild situation. But those

Kara Goldin 25:02
early days of beaning with meeting with plants, for sure, we have so many stories with hint and, yeah, I mean, in addition to creating the actual product, I mean, we were the way that the product is actually what’s inside has always really mattered to me. So no preservatives, and no one was doing a water that didn’t have a flavored water that didn’t have preservatives in it, and so all these plants, many people just wouldn’t even work with me. I mean, I’m sure you hit that too. Like, if they’re like, you know, where’d you come from? You’ve never worked at, you know, you didn’t work at an espresso. I’m not going to work with you. And you know you don’t have a ton of capital behind you. I’m not going to but you just have to find one, right? I always tell entrepreneurs, you just dial for dollars, and not really dollars, but dial for, you know, that partnership, and it just takes a ton of tenacity, and just, you just gotta keep going. But it was, yeah, I mean, it was crazy, and ultimately, once we proved it out, we were able to take it to manufacturers that today, flavored waters. I mean, many of them don’t have preservatives. So we actually took the process that we created became kind of industry wide. We don’t get credit for it, right, but no one was doing it right. And so there’s so many stories around that for sure. So when you think about expanding into brick and mortar, I know you guys just recently went into Walmart. You also developed a smaller machine. Do you want to talk a little bit about both of those? Yeah,

Ryan Close 26:49
so, you know, again, part of the deal with Hamilton Beach, and you know, they’ve, they’ve helped us with, you know, they’re our vendor of record, and they have been, they’ve done a great job and got us into, you know, $1,600 at or $1,800 at Walmart. So that, and that just kicked in in, like, late June this year. You know, we’re in Kohl’s, Sam’s Club, Costco, you know, Nordstrom, we’re going into this October. We’ve got, we’re starting to take entry point into liquor stores. So Total Wine and more specs. Bevmo, so you’ll see us there, this q4 in a big way. And, you know, hundreds and hundreds of maybe 1000s, and by the end of the year, liquor stores. So retail is critical for us. I know it was similar to hint, right? It’s, it’s E commerce is a tough game. It’s, you know, it was really great a couple, few years ago, and it’s less great now. And you know the cost to acquire consumers, you know, you being, you know, at the mercy of Google, Facebook, you know, that hamster wheel. We kind of call it. It stinks, right? It’s like, how do we get off it? How do we one of the things I tell our team is like, we got to control our own destiny. And if we’re at the mercy of like Facebook, algos, and you know, we’re not, we’re just a kind of a pawn, and we’re hoping and wishing. And that’s, you know, as my old, you know, mentors in the past would say, you know, hoping is not a strategy, right? It’s

Kara Goldin 28:12
hope is not a strategy, right? So, you know, it

Ryan Close 28:15
was really tricky. And so, you know, we know we had to get off the, just the the hamster wheel, we’ll call it. And so we’ve by going into more retail, and that helps. And as you know, Ben and I would, you know, just awareness, general awareness, like, we’re still very nascent. You know, Bartesian, maybe 3% of the population in the US knows that we exist. So what an opportunity for us. Instead of just like, paying out the of our pockets for, you know, hey, look at us. On on online, it’s, you know, get into 16, 1800 stores, and in Walmart, it’s the number one foot traffic by 10x in the country, you know, seeing our brand and product and saying, what’s that like? What’s going on there? How to, you know, never heard of this thing, right? So that’s helping us a lot, and that’s, I think, in order for us to take the next stage in growth, it’s, it’s critical, yeah, or you’re out getting more money, right? And just, you’re on this, like, continuous fundraising hamster wheel, right? And it’s like, well, I got to keep raising money to keep reinvesting in marketing, digital ads. And so it’s like, well, which, which are we going to do? So, so,

Kara Goldin 29:19
so interesting. So, and your smaller machine that you obviously came out with that is, you know, especially when people have limited counter space, it’s, it’s super great as well, and the price point is lower than the original machine to Well, everybody needs to check that out as well. We’ll have all the information for bartejian, of course, in the show notes. But just one last question. So looking back on on your journey so far, what’s like? One piece of advice that you wish you knew before starting Barthe. Education, yeah.

Ryan Close 30:01
So I would say, you know, I’m someone who doesn’t micromanage at all, right, like, I, I definitely, I wouldn’t say I’m not, I’m I love control. I definitely, you know, heavily, not a control freak, but I’m a control person, but I don’t like to micromanage. So it’s like, hey, find great people and let them kill it. And in the early days, you know, doing that, I would say, I probably, you know, should have inspected, you know, some of the experts, and whether that was with the foods, like, again, I didn’t know anything about food science. And so bringing in, you know, early stage food scientists that I’m trusting everything they say, like, it’s gospel, because, hey, you have all these, you know, letters behind your name, and then realizing, well, they’re not business people. They don’t really understand it. Like they get certain they get it, if we’re, you know, certain way, but not what we needed. And same with, you know, digital, back to digital ads, like we had early days again, I didn’t know anything about that stuff. And it’s like finding an agency, finding several and then, you know, go one of them. It’s like, oh, these folks really think, you know, they they’re talking about ROAs, and they explained it to me like a kindergartner, so I could understand it. And it’s like, Okay, I’m gonna trust them. And then you realize, after a little, you know, too long, I’d say that, yeah, I should have had another like, I guess, level of inspection. So that was one thing I would recommend is just like, find, you know, you don’t have to be the expert in everything. I definitely tell anyone who asks, I’m like, you don’t, don’t be. In fact, don’t be. Don’t try to be, because you’re gonna waste your time. You’re spinning your wheels. Like, get, but find, like, a couple people who can, like, verify, and don’t just, you know, okay, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs in the early stages are like, just grasping. And it’s like, Who can help me? And like, you’re my great, you know, the great white hope? And it’s like, well, they actually weren’t. And these days, everyone says they’re experts at something, right? So you’re, you’re bound to get snafued or tricked. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 31:54
definitely. So Well, this has been so amazing and interesting on many, many levels. So Ryan, close, founder and CEO of Bartesian Thank you so much for coming on. And everyone needs to get onto the website, purchase product, go to Walmart. You’ll be seeing, I’m sure, a lot more of Bartesian products out there, and definitely try the drinks. So thank you again, Ryan, thanks, Kara. It’s

Ryan Close 32:22
been a great time.

Kara Goldin 32:22
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you, too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. You.

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